REVIEW: ‘Ballad of A Small Player’ Offers a Glittering Look At Rock Bottom

Colin Farrell is at his best when he’s going all in on a role. From action to dramady and everything in between, Ferrell consistently shows his range, and in Netflix’s Ballad of a Small Player, the range on display is being pathetic. And I do mean that in the most complimentary way. 

Adapted by Rowan Joffé from Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel, Ballad of a Small Player is directed by Edward Berger and written by Rowan Joffe. Set in the neon-drenched casinos of Macao, we watch as Farrell’s Lord Doyle stumble into deeper and deeper debt. Doyle knows he’s at the end of it all, even if he doesn’t know what “it’ is, but he can feel his debt catching up to him and the walls closing in. Lying low in Macao turned into drinking to excess, gambling without any sense of self-preservation, and calling the casinos home. 

With his lucky yellow gloves, Doyle hopes that the $352,000 debt he’s amassed can be solved by just one more hand. And it’s always just one more hand with him. Charismatic and good-looking, he relies on his charm to get through everything. But you can only outrun your debt for so long, something that he realizes when the hotel comes calling for their payment.

Ballad of a Small Player is Colin Farrell at his best, a character completely consumed.

From the very beginning of Ballad of a Small Player, you can tell that Lord Doyle’s hyperactivity is the end of his mania. He’s been moving, betting, and losing, and we’re about to see just how far rock bottom is for him. When he meets Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), Lord Doyle is confronted with his past and the old woman he defrauded. Here is the bottom: his past caught up, and he has nothing but his signature yellow gloves and an insatiable appetite. 

Ballad of a Small Player has fun exploring what clawing up from rock bottom looks like, and in this particular place, how gluttony endlessly consumes. Whether he’s gambling or gorging himself on food or liquor, Lord Doyle is all about excess. The luxurious beauty of Macao becomes its own tempting character. The Chinese characters in the film, Grandma (Deanie Ip) and Dao Ming (Fala Chen), are in complete control of their paths while the debt-ridden “ex-pats” swirl around them. 

The film, even with the vast spaces of the casinos, begins to feel claustrophobic, with close-ups of Doyle’s face and the way he resembles the hungry ghosts of folklore. His time in Macao coincides with the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, where patrons make offerings to the dead in the hope of satiating them. And those around Doyle see him as one of those ghosts, only with no burnt offerings to stop the constant cycle of consumption that the addiction creates. 

Self-pity and narcissism are all that Lord Doyle knows how to feel at the beginning of this Netflix Film.

When Dao Ming meets Doyle, the two are drawn to each other. While it would be easy to call it romantic, their connection is more kindred than that. Doyle has gotten into his position because of those he stole from and exploited, and Dao Ming has succeeded in life only after robbing her parents. The two of them are similar, but Dao Ming has a calmness to her. Having become a loan shark, she can be his life raft if he takes her up on it. 

Tragedy and redemption are two core pillars of the narrative we watch unfold in Ballad of a Small Player. While Dao Ming offers Doyle a solution, his approach to it commits one more sin. He can steal from her and pay her back, that’s what he sees. However, if he never gets the chance to, it’s how we’ll learn if he’s really seen the light. 

Once Doyle is on his path to redemption with a mysterious win streak that leads the casinos to say that a ghost haunts him, he has gotten back almost everything that he needs. The film’s climax is at the table, his real last hand before he tries to pay for his transgressions, and it offers a somber reality. It’s a bit of too little too late and all regret. Still, the film is hopeful for Doyle. Now satiated and calm, Doyle can not only reject a hand of baccarat, but he can also part with his earnings. 

Ballad of a Small Player is visually perfect, with saturated color charting Doyle’s climb from rock bottom.

Aesthetically, Ballad of a Small Player is sublime. The use of heavily saturated color pops from the screen, muddying the deeper Lord Doyle falls into his gambling-addicted haze, only to erupt again as he begins to climb out of the pit he’s cast himself into. The beauty of the set design and costuming can’t be understated, and, as the film comes to a close, the rowdy entrance has subsided, still vibrant, but calmer, more intimate. 

While I don’t entirely love the outcome in Ballad of a Small Player and the sacrifice made for Doyle’s peace, the film’s acts of penance force the audience to reflect on the totality of Doyle’s choices, lies, and moments where he let his soul actually reveal itself. 

Farrell’s performance in The Ballad of a Small Player is outstanding. Erratic, narcissistic, and insatiable, Doyle is incredibly unlikeable. He’s also annoying. But when Doyle is at his worst, it’s how his scene partners balance against him —particularly Swinton and Fala Chen—that make it all come together. Every character exists with the other in a delicate dance, but at the same time, it’s Farrell who carries it all home. Visually, the film has all the markings of joy, but it isn’t until the somber atmosphere of the film’s ending that we get anything close to that emotion. 

Ballad of a Small Player doesn’t escape all of the problems that come with an “ex-pat” story, but it’s still good.

The one sticking point I have with the film is how much it situates itself as an “Ex-pat” story. “Ex-pat” stories are often orientalist wanderings that end up belittling their locations and the cultures present there.

The film avoids that for the most part, but still finds itself fixated on how a new country and its people can suddenly fix a broken white character looking for redemption. Still, that is a burden of the genre, and one that Ballad of a Small Player only dabbles in lightly, even if it’s too much for my liking. 

Still, Ballad of a Small Player is a decent watch, even if it’s messy. Some moments are disgusting, others are hilarious, but it’s all a kinetic pathway up from rock bottom to a new life. Redemption, salvation, whatever you call it, Lord Doyle doesn’t necessarily deserve it for what he’s done to people. But help doesn’t only come to people who deserve it, even if those watching don’t agree with the peace they find.

Ballad of a Small Player is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.